What Health Studies on Coffee Miss

My Google Alerts on Coffee often bring mundane or obscure references, but yesterday a nugget turned up. It's an article in the Boston Globe, which Corby also commented on, summarizing several of the studies on coffee and its relationship to medical conditions.

I tried to follow a few of the articles back to the full paper, but was unsuccessful. Sometimes the abstract was available free online, but not the full paper--at least in the two I pursued. I am always looking for a definition of "a cup" or "a serving" and the brew strength. As we've discussed, coffee strength varies considerably, and caffeine content varies enormously among coffees.

I'd like researchers to be specific about strength (grams per liter) and caffeine content (if that's presumed to be the important constituent for the study) and serving size.

Another source for peer-reviewed articles on coffee and health is Cosic.org which is funded by a small number of European coffee roasters.

It's mostly happy news. Read carefully, but most of us can enjoy another cup.

Jerry Baldwin is co-founder of Starbucks in Seattle, where he was the first roaster and coffee buyer.
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Gerald Baldwin purchased Peet's Coffee and Tea in Berkeley, California, in 1984, and worked diligently to sustain the vision of the founder, Alfred Peet. He remains involved as a member of the board of directors. Jerry was a co-founder of Starbucks in Seattle, where he was the first roaster and coffee buyer. He remained involved until 1987 when he sold the company of eight stores. He accepts no credit (or blame) for the ensuing twenty-odd years. He also serves as a member of the board of TechnoServe a non-profit NGO working to alleviate poverty in Africa and Latin America. He has also been Chairman and Trustee of Coffee Quality Institute and President and Director of Association Scientific Internationale du Café (ASIC). Baldwin is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Specialty Coffee Association of America www.scaa.org, where he served as a director of the SCAA, and the the founding chairman of its Technical Standards Committee. Jerry was honored as Coffeeman of the Year for North America by Tea & Coffee Trade Journal, and he is an honorary member of the Kilimanjaro Specialty Coffee Growers Association, known as Kilicafe. Baldwin was a founding director of Red Hook Ale Brewery and a founding contributor of the American Institute of Wine and Food. He writes in Sonoma County, California, a few miles from M.F.K. Fisher's home in Glen Ellen, looking over his small vineyard. Jerry and his wife, Jane, produce small crops of olive oil and Zinfandel in the Valley of the Moon.